One Hot Fall Term (Yardley College Chronicles Book1) (14 page)

Would I be willing to say I’m going to live my life without trying anything wild or kinky?

Yes, I am.

I must have been riveted to the floor, lost in thought. I sense Jonathon looking at me. He wears a soft smile. There’s something in that smile I can’t read. It’s not amusement. Or lust. He’s not making fun of me…

It’s like he’s looking into my soul.

Okay, I don’t like that.

“Anywhere else you want to show me? What do people do here?”

“Anything they want, within the boundaries allowed by the club.”

“Like what, specifically?” I push.

“Bondage. Whipping. Fisting.” He names a few other things. Things that make me blink. I guess there’s something for everyone, but it would not be for me.

I notice Jonathon stays very close to me and always seems to be looking around the room. I realize he is watching people who look at me. And despite my beyond-casual outfit, men do look at me. Many people at the club look to be in their twenties or thirties. Some of the Doms—it’s obvious that is their role by their demeanour, stance, and cool, confident expressions—look at me, barely registering a reaction on their faces. But I feel their interest. It’s a palpable thing.

I’m flattered but I don’t know where to look. I don’t want to demurely drop my eyes like many of the submissives do. But I don’t want to send any accidental signal of encouragement.

“Come,” Jonathon says. A word that confuses me until I realize he is leading me somewhere. “You’re a strong woman. My read on you is that you could enjoy being a submissive. You have desires that you fight and I can tell that you’ve borne responsibility on your shoulders. Having control taken away from you could give you pleasure. Or you might enjoy greater control.”

He pushes open a door. In here, the scene is different. The woman is clad in a black leather bustier and shiny black boots that go up to her thighs. The heels are so towering I have no idea how she walks in them. Her hair is jet black and falls to her waist. Her face is almost like a pixie’s, like Audrey Hepburn. Yet command exudes from her as she paces around a man. A young, gorgeous man who is tied, spread-eagle to a rack.

“I will strike you again, sub,” the woman declares, her voice cool, crisp with a slight British accent. “You have been a most naughty young man.”

“Yes, mistress.”

As I watch, the mistress brings the whip down across the young man’s incredibly cute butt.

He flinches, but the expression on his face? It’s pure delight. He jerks at the chains that hold him as she gives another flick of the whip.

Jonathon’s watching me. “You’re aroused.”

“I am. Yet I can’t help but feel wrong about it.”

“Why? He wants this. He’s getting pleasure. They have done this together many times and they trust each other.”

So much trust must be involved. Could I do that? Trust someone so much?

I trust Ryan a lot. More than I’ve ever trusted in anyone, believed in anyone.

“Please, mistress.” The young guy looks up at his mistress with huge brown eyes. “I want to be punished. I need to be punished.”

That word hits me hard. Punished. I guess I always felt I was punished for not being strong, for not being courageous enough to protect myself.

In a way, I guess I’ve always felt that what happened to me at the hands of my stepfather happened because I was being punished for all my weaknesses and failings. If I had been a stronger person, it never could have happened.

Of course I was a kid, but my soul doesn’t get the logic of that. My soul sees the world in black and white. Bad things happened. Maybe I deserved them because I didn’t have courage.

“Are you okay, Mia?”

I hear Jonathon’s voice, but it sounds far away. I look at this young guy and wonder—is this really what he wants, or has he woven a complex fabric of guilt and pain and hurt and need for more hurt? How do you ever know?

“Please. I need punishment,” he whispers. “I was disobedient.”

Something snaps in me. “Really you don’t,” I counter. It comes out louder than I expected. But the words rush out. “No one should accept being hit. You don’t deserve to get whipped, paddled, or hurt for whatever bad thing you perceive you’ve done. What you need to do is get your head sorted out. You need to be healed, not beaten.”

I walk away.

Behind me, the mistress says to Jonathon, “Your submissive is not very well trained.”

“It’s my club,” Jonathon says, his voice like frost on an arctic iceberg. “I train my subs as I see fit.”

I’ve stopped running away—well, striding away very fast and I can overhear them speak.

“I beg your pardon, Master,” the woman says. Her imperious voice is now filled with contrition.

Jonathon’s long strides bring him to me in moments.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“No one is to judge in here. We accept that we may not share the same interests and desires, but we respect it.”

“No judgement. I can see why people come.”

“The people who come here are not all people who have been abused. True, some are, but that has nothing to do with why they are here. It’s just a statistical number, in the same way you would find victims of abuse in a restaurant or shopping at the mall.”

I shake my head. I don’t quite believe him.

“Think about it, Mia. Not all people who are abused come to BDSM clubs. There are many people here who have had happy upbringings, but their brains are wired to enjoy this kind of sex.”

“I guess,” I say.

I don’t know what kind of person I would have been without the abuse. I don’t know how much it moulded my personality, my psyche, my sexuality. I’ll never know. The choice of how I might have developed was taken away from me.

Anyway, does it matter why the young male sub wants to be punished? If he’s happy, am I right to condemn him? Even if the guy needs this to cope with stuff, he’s coping in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone else.

I’ve tried to cope by shoving stuff into a kind of closet in my head. I don’t think that’s the best answer.

Can I forgive myself for my mistakes, for going along with what happened to me? For years, I tried, but the self-destructive tendencies always won out. The only way I found to cope was to pretend I was someone else. To pretend I was the good girl I might have been if I hadn’t been abused.

Jonathon falls into step with me. For a man who likes to be in command, he seems to be willing to follow me. I wonder why. Am I really worth all this time and trouble when he could be tying up Crystal right now?

“Who are you really, Jonathon? How do you honestly feel? When you are here do you feel happy because you’re having inventive sex, or are you here for something else? When you use a whip, who are you really hitting?”

He doesn’t say anything, but he takes a sharp breath. I suddenly realize I’ve struck a nerve. Then he says, “I would never do that to a sub who trusts me. The scene is about both her and me. I don’t exorcise personal demons here. That would be a betrayal of trust.”

“I used to do stuff to attack someone who hurt me, someone who I can’t touch in any way,” I say softly. “Someone who doesn’t even care. Who I can never hurt.”

“Who was that, Mia?”

I wave his question away. “I learned the only thing that works is forgetting about them and falling in love.”

He studies me for a long time. Couples walk past us, with leather and leashes and whips and chains, but he is not focusing on anything but me. “I was right about you,” he says, finally.

I have no idea what that means. But I sense he is like me. He has stuff locked up inside him. Suddenly, I want to find out what has shaped Jonathon. I notice he’s not denying anything I said. If anything he looks like he is mulling over my words, really thinking about them…

I wonder—could I actually change him?

Don’t go there
, a voice warns in my head.
You can barely change yourself.

He leads me to the bar, where I get a second diet coke and he orders one too.

I feel an intense gaze on me from the other end of the bar I glance up. Blond cropped hair, vivid blue eyes. My heart leaps until I realize this is not Ryan, of course. But he’s watching me over the rim of his tumbler and the liquid inside the glass is a golden-amber.

“A friend,” Jonathon says.

The man stands—he must be six-four—and he greets Jonathon with an extended hand, then a brief masculine embrace. He’s wearing a beautiful suit. “How are you, Jonno?” the man asks. “Get in much sailing this summer? I went through the Caribbean and was almost hijacked for pirates.”

Jonno? The nickname does not suit Jonathon. Jonathon is a three-syllable kind of guy.

He introduces me. “Mia, this is Devlin Crane. Crane, this is Mia, my friend from Yardley.”

“Enchanted to meet you, Mia.” Devlin lifts my fingers and kisses them. Then says something that completely stuns me. “I’m the go-to guy when Jonno is putting together a threesome.”

“Not this time.” Jonathon’s voice is terse. “Mia is a friend.”

“Unfortunate.” Devlin’s eyes hold mine. They are almost the same sapphire blue of Ryan’s eyes. “I have an appointment in the theatre room in a few minutes, but would have happily postponed for you, Mia.” In a softer voice, one that wraps around me like strong arms, he murmurs, “I would have enjoyed a threesome with you. Jonathon and I regularly have menages involving the beautiful woman either of us is dating. And you are the most gorgeous woman he’s dated yet.”

I’m about to argue—Lara is far prettier than me. But Jonathon hadn’t brought her here.

Crane bows to me and leaves.

After I finish my soft drink, Jonathon says, “One more stop on the tour. Unless you want to leave.”

The diet coke has given me a burst of energy. I check my watch. It’s now 2 a.m. Fortunately, tomorrow my first class is at 10:30. And since we have our major studio project due in two weeks, I expect more than half the class will be skipping it anyway.

He puts his hand at the small of my back and leads me away. “Devlin wanted you,” he says softly by my ear.

“Do you really share with him?” I try to say it casually, but it has rattled me. Jonathon has far more sexual experience than me. It shouldn’t matter, but for some reason it makes me feel nervous and edgy.

He shrugs. “Most of the time.”

We reach a black velvet curtain, which he pulls aside to reveal a set of stairs of granite, with open risers that are lit from below. Its disorienting and I have to hold the banister, though Jonathon’s strong hand on my back is reassuring. He leads me up to a corridor. There are more openings with curtains across them. “We’ll use my box,” Jonathon says.

***

The box is indeed like a private viewing box in a sports arena. Each wall contains four boxes and rows of theatre-style seats that overlook a large room. In the center of the room is a stage, which contains leather benches, an iron contraption like a medieval rack, and an oval bed.

I sink onto the plush crimson velvet of the chair. Jonathon sits at my side. A panel of tinted glass rims the balcony, but I can easily see over it to the floor below.

A woman is led into the room by the leash around her neck. Soft lights sparkle on the spikes and jewels in the collar. She has masses of dark curls, pinned up with a large jeweled clip. She is naked. Her body is slightly overweight, but that gives her generous curves. Crystal is the only woman I’ve seen here with a model thin body topped with huge breasts. Many of the other women are voluptuous and real. They are probably all in their twenties and thirties, though I do glimpse an older couple across the room in another balcony. The man has silver hair; the woman’s is white and drawn back in a sleek bun.

Down on the stage, the man holding the leash is Devlin Crane. He has stripped out of his suit and he’s naked. Obviously proud of his body, he struts into the room.

He has every right to be cocky.

Instead of a six-pack, his abdomen is a perfect set of eight well-defined muscles. Crane is lean and muscular, with the strong, wiry body of a kick-boxer. A tattoo of a dragon runs down his right biceps, tail coiling lovingly around the bulge of muscle. He has Ryan’s broad shoulders and trim hips, with the same jutting hipbones that look so sexy. His butt is just as tight, his legs long. With his close cropped blond hair, he could be Ryan’s twin. Or at least his big brother.

This is going to be agony, because every moment I’m going to be thinking of Ryan.

Devlin’s cock is just like Ryan’s too, though a little thicker and longer. I can see why he strides with pride, his cock waving from side to side, since it’s straight, gorgeous and enormous. I’m the one blushing. I shouldn’t look, so I turn and look at Jonathon. He grins at my blush.

“This is called the theatre room because we are going to watch while they perform?” I ask.

Jonathon nods.

“Isn’t that kind of—?”

“Kinky?” he says.

“I suppose that’s the point,” I say.

Given the collar and leash, I steel myself to watch a scene in which Crane revels in his dominance over a submissive woman—something bondage, whips, and thresholds of agony—so I’m surprised when he calmly sits on the edge of a black leather bench, and holds up his cock.

  I swallow hard. His fingers barely fit around the base of his shaft, which means his equipment is beyond huge. He still holds the leash and the chain glitters in the light as his partner climbs on him. She must be very excited because she takes his prick inside easily. Her head drops back and she moans with deep, intense pleasure as she seats down on him. He’s all the way inside her.

“Wow,” I say.

Jonathon was right. I am intrigued by this place. I’m aroused. I want to stay here. I ache to do wild things.

But that’s not the person I’m supposed to be now. I’m supposed to be good.

“I have to go,” I say as the leashed beauty begins to move up and down on Devlin Crane. Then she stops, and I see why. Two gorgeous young guys in leather come forward. She puts her arms over their shoulders and each guy supports one of her legs. A woman appears and applies nipple clamps to Crane’s partner. Thin chains run from those—chains that Crane holds in his hands. He tugs them from side to side and the girl’s moans are so intense they ripple right down to my pussy.